Ooni’s old self clawed at her insides, resurrected from some sucking swamp in her soul, trying to drown her in the choking mud.
She pressed herself deeper into the crevice between the blocks of black glass, trying to make herself as small as possible. She had to take up as little space as she could — cut away pieces of herself and toss them out into the dark, sacrifice her legs, her arms, her nose, her lips, her tongue, make herself a dead thing with a skull for a face, so that she might be overlooked and left alone. She had to be quiet — no, silent! Absolutely silent. No breath, no gurgles of fear from her guts all clenched hard as a fist. She should rip those out too, cast her bowels into the dark flames, or offer up her intestines to the Sisterhood of the Skull, so maybe they would be too busy eating her entrails to bother with what was left of her.
No, no, no, don’t whimper now! Shhh, shhhhh, shhhhhhh.
She had to be silent, not a single mewl could escape her lips, or she would die. She had to strangle fear and make pain meaningless, or she would die. If Ooni’s former Sisters — sisters! all of them sisters and she the smallest of the litter, the runt — if they found her and Ilyusha, they would torture them both before killing them. Death, if Ooni was lucky. The alternative was far worse. They might keep her alive long past the point where sanity had fled. She’d seen it, she’d seen them do it, eating a zombie and keeping her alive and alone and eating chunks of her every day and never letting her go.
But Ooni was already dead, wasn’t she? There was no way out of this weird little chamber, no exit, no door, no route away from Yolanda and Cantrelle and whatever other dregs of the Sisterhood had survived. And they had found her, they had found her at last. It was as if Elpida and Telokopolis and the return of her beloved Leuca had been nothing but a dream. What horrible irony, that they who had been hunted with so much effort had now been found by accident. And she who had ached to find them and slay them and present their heads to Elpida, they had found her instead, wounded and cut off, behind the lines.
Ooni strangled a treacherous laugh, swallowing so hard that her throat hurt, biting her lips and cheeks, tasting her own hot blood. Tears were leaking from her eyes, screwed shut in hopes the world would end without her. She couldn’t breathe, there was a weight on her chest. She was dead, dead, dead, after all this, she was still dead, still nothing. She was back in the same pit that Elpida had saved her from, sunk to her chin, about to drown.
She was not a Death’s Head anymore, she knew that. She had accepted Telokopolis.
But she was still prey.
The voices of her former Sisters floated out of the dark, loud enough to hear over the distant storm-static beyond the tomb. They were still on the opposite side of the room for now, where they had emerged from the wall.
“This chamber’s sealed,” one of them said, slightly out of breath. “No ways in or out. No local movement. I think we’re clear. Fucking hell, that was close. That thing was almost on top of us.”
Cerybe, perhaps? Yes, Ooni recognised her voice. Cerybe had always been alright. Not too dangerous to be alone with. Perhaps Ooni could negotiate? Maybe none of the really monstrous Sisters had survived, only Yolanda herself, and Cantrelle. Perhaps all their real power was gone, perhaps the Sisterhood was only present in body, not in spirit?
“Pause here,” somebody said — muffled, facing the wrong way. Ooni strained, but she couldn’t tell who. Maybe Teuta? Or Narulue? “Get our bearings. Make a plan. Boss, Yola, orders?”
“Sealed or not, it doesn’t fucking matter!” Cantrelle spat. Ooni flinched, then swallowed a whimper of fear — had her armour scraped against the floor, or the glass? No, Cantrelle was still going. Her voice sounded scratchy and rough; Elpida had strangled her unconscious when they’d first met, but had Cantrelle’s wounds still not healed, after all those weeks? “We have no way of stopping that degenerate protoplasm. Except running. Running, running, running! They have us running and hiding like fucking rats! Us!”
There was a sound of metal against metal, Cantrelle punching something, or hitting the wall. Ooni held onto her flinch that time. Silence, stillness, nothingness. She was nothing, she was already dead, she was a month-old corpse filled with rainwater and worms. She tried to become one with the storm, just background noise, not really there.
Another voice spoke up. Ooni recognised it as Halima, another minor Sister, of little importance. “Cantrelle, for fuck’s sake. Yolanda needs to think, let her think—”
“Fuck you!” Cantrelle screeched. There was another thump, then a grunt. Had Cantrelle cuffed Halima over the head? “Fuck you, you snivelling worm. You do not speak out of turn again, or next time it’ll be a bullet. And fuck Yolanda, too. It’s her fault we’re like this. You hear that, Yola? This is your fault. You’ve gotten us fucked.”
A click-buzz of helmet speakers cracked the air — powered armour. Ooni bit her lips to keep from screaming. How had they retained the suits?!
DeeGee’s voice echoed off the black glass: “Canny. Don’t talk to Yolanda like that. Nobody talks to—”
Cantrelle interrupted with a cold rasp. “I will talk to Yola however I like. And you will not presume to order me again.”
A moment of silence, filled with distant static and the howl of hurricane winds.
Bionic bio-polymer scraped against Ooni’s armour carapace. The noose around her waist tightened and tugged. An intake of breath, a soft clatter of claws against the stock of a shotgun, the wet click of lips peeling back from teeth. Ooni almost screamed. Her eyes flew open, blinded with tears, trapped between black glass and rearing shadows and the echoes of her former Sisters.
Ilyusha — wedged next to Ooni in their narrow hiding place — was starting to rise, clutching her automatic shotgun, teeth bared and ready to bite.
Ooni threw her right arm over Ilyusha, to stop her from standing up. Her bare right hand was encased in quick-drying pinkish resin now, the burning fires inside doused in undead biochemistry, but her right shoulder was still bruised so hard it moved like old wood. Ooni swallowed a scream and tried not to sob, mouth open in a silent wail.
Ilyusha hissed a whisper between her clenched teeth. “What!?”
Ooni shook her head, hard. She mouthed, barely above silence, “No, no! It’s them. The Death’s Heads. No. We can’t … we have to … we just can’t … ”
Ilyusha stared with heavy-lidded eyes; she looked exhausted. She had fought like a demon against Kuro, but now she looked barely able to stand without help. “It’s what we came here to do.”
Ooni shook her head again. “Too many. Too many.”
Ilyusha blinked heavily. She looked disappointed — disappointed in Ooni. “Don’t you wanna kill them?”
Ooni’s old self presented a hundred desperate arguments for silence and submission, but not a single one survived the fire sparked by that look and those words.
Ooni wanted to kill Yolanda.
She wanted to kill them all. Kuro, Cantrelle, every single one of the lesser sisters, for every indignity, every petty act of violence, every time she had been made to scramble for something worse than subsistence. But Yolanda most of all. The head of the snake. The voice of a demon. Once she had held Yolanda in awe and loyalty, but those had been born of terror, and the need to cling to the skirts of the hierarchy which Yolanda represented.
More importantly, she wanted to kill them to protect Telokopolis, Elpida, Pheiri, all the others, Ilyusha at her side right now, Leuca back there with the rest. Even the ones who saw her with contempt and would never trust her, she wanted to protect them too. Even the worst attitudes within Elpida’s new cadre, in the bosom of Telokopolis, were kind and welcoming when compared to the best that the Sisterhood had to offer.
Ooni’s fear curdled and soured. She transmuted it into a clean and focused hatred.
She hated Yolanda. She hated the Death’s Heads.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I do.”
Ilyusha grinned. She started to move again, but Ooni kept her arm in place. She would never have dared restrain Ilyusha before, but she didn’t want Illy to get killed.
“Wait, wait,” Ooni mouthed. “We need intel. Need to know how many. Need a plan. Wait a second. P-please?”
Ilyusha hissed, then reluctantly subsided.
The Death’s Heads were still arguing.
“Cantrelle has the right to question my decisions,” Yolanda was saying. “Please, Sisters, followers, friends, loyal to the last, please calm yourselves. There is no need for this division, not in the face of the foe so close to our heels. We are sealed in this room for now, but we do not know when the arch-degenerate will come upon us again. We must remain ready to flee.”
Ooni frowned in disbelief.
That was Yola’s voice, impossible to mistake — the sickly-sweet honey over iron-hard resolution, purring and wet, lips clicking on consonants. Ooni’s guts clenched at the sound, her skin breaking out in cold sweat. The tone, the word choice, it was all familiar enough. But the Yolanda Ooni had known would never say something like that.
It was never acceptable for anybody to openly question the leader and prophet and light of the Sisterhood. Everybody knew things must be different in private, especially between Yola and Kuro, and presumably between the others that Yolanda spoke to alone. But out in the open, in front of the lower orders? Never. The Yolanda Ooni had known would have implied disloyalty without giving any specific orders, then allowed the Sisters to take matters into their own hands, either there and then, or later, in the dark, away from witnesses. The Yolanda of Ooni’s memories spoke with an almost irresistible logic despite the evil of her guidance; this Yola here and now sounded limp and hesitant, as if on the cusp of halting with every other word.
The Sisterhood of the Skull had never enjoyed unity of purpose or clarity of direction. Yolanda had always been in charge, ultimate and unquestionable, but beneath her was an ever-changing hierarchy in which every Sister jealously guarded her own position. To slip too far down the invisible order would invite internal predation. Vulnerability could mean death, or at the very least losing chunks of oneself to whoever had the strength to take what they wanted. When Ooni had been one of them, she had accepted that as the natural way, the only way to thrive in this undead afterlife, better than being one of the bottom feeders huddling naked against the concrete, fighting over a single mouthful of carrion.
Now Ooni knew better; though the worm of the Death’s Heads still lurked in her heart, she knew it was wrong. She knew that comradeship would overcome the alternative. This ceaseless internal competition would only erode and destroy.
And now Yolanda herself and Cantrelle were openly arguing. Was Cantrelle trying to take over? Was this the end of the Sisterhood?
Ooni grasped that straw; perhaps the internal conflict would give her an opening, though she couldn’t yet figure out how, but she knew she could do it. She had been chosen by Elpida, guided by the hand of Telokopolis, and had driven off Kuro at Ilyusha’s side! She wasn’t some snivelling coward anymore, ducking her head and eyeing the shadows for the claws of her own so-called Sisters. If she was going to die — and that seemed likely — she would go out by slaughtering the foes of Telokopolis.
A few grumbles followed Yolanda’s words, clicks of acknowledgement, and a raspy snort of contempt from Cantrelle. Ooni tried to count and identify the voices. More than six? Eight? Ten? She heard the overlapping crackle-pop of at least two suit-mounted speaker systems. One of them must be DeeGee, she’d heard that voice earlier. Had Yazhu survived as well? That would make sense, they were the most heavily armoured pair in the Sisterhood, with the exception of Kuro.
Two suits of powered armour. Cantrelle and Yolanda. At least four Sisters. How many others? Three? Seven? Ten? Bad odds.
Ooni needed line of sight, but that was impossible without revealing herself. The Death’s Heads were on the far side of the room, behind two dozen rows of black glass blocks. The room was bisected by two pathways, which formed a wide junction in the middle. There was also an open space around the perimeter of the room, but no way to approach the Death’s Heads from a blind angle.
She glanced up and around, at the shadowy reflections moving across the black glass. A constellation of actinic lights twinkled inside, reflected and filtered through hundreds of obsidian surfaces. Ooni moved her head to the right, then the left, trying to catch sight of the other side of the room in the kaleidoscope of shadows. Even if all she could see were blurred outlines and silhouettes, that would give her something to go on.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
She gestured to Ilyusha, pointing leftward; if she moved a little, she might get a better view of the ghostly reflections. Ilyusha nodded and unwrapped her tail from around Ooni’s waist. The bionic limb made a gentle scraping sound against the plates of Ooni’s armour carapace as it slithered to the floor, but the Sisters were arguing too loudly to notice.
“Ready to flee?!” Cantrelle spat. “We’re not fleeing, we’re playing into the hands of a fucking Necromancer! And you know it! You all know it! We all saw the same thing, we all saw—”
“Cantrelle, shit, shut the fuck up!” That was Doriji. Ooni was surprised. Doriji was practically a bottom-feeder, little higher than Ooni herself. For her to speak to Cantrelle like that, something had gone terribly wrong. “Yolanda says it wasn’t—”
“Yolanda is fucking wrong!” Cantrelle screeched. “You can’t fucking see it?! You believe in ghosts, you—”
“Now now,” Yolanda purred — though there was a tremor in her voice. “It was not a Necromancer. I would never accept instruction from such a vile thing, opposed to everything we believe in. It was a ghost, a ghost of my own dear mother. Why is that so hard to believe? We are dredged from the seas of time, why not a ghost? And she has delivered us from the degenerate and the traitor, from the foolishness of the untested forms of life, from those who have rejected their basic humanity. Has she not? We stand here because of that. Would a Necromancer have done such a thing? I think not.”
A ghost? So the ghosts had appeared to the Death’s Heads too, just as they had to Kuro and Ooni. Was that how the Sisterhood had learned to manipulate the walls of the tomb?
But Kuro had manipulated the black tomb-metal via magnetic field effectors in her powered armour. Did the others also have similar devices? Ooni wasn’t sure. Kuro keeping a secret like that from everybody seemed pretty reasonable. But everyone with powered armour had similar devices? It didn’t add up.
Ooni crept slowly leftward, between the rows of black glass blocks, until reflected shadows became fuzzy outlines. She couldn’t see any real reflection — the room was too dark for that — merely rough shapes where standing figures blocked the twinkling inner lights inside the glass. Ooni counted them by the absences they left, making educated guesses where the outlines blurred into one another.
Twelve people.
Maybe a couple less, but Ooni couldn’t be sure. She bit her bottom lip, trying not to cringe with the return of her fear. Twelve! Two had suits of powered armour, big and bulky. Yolanda’s shadow was a dim purple smear, so she still had her suit as well. Eight other figures stood at the far end of the chamber, gathered around the argument, laden down with body armour and guns and equipment.
No Kuro, though. Kuro had told the truth about leaving Yolanda behind and going off on her own. Ooni silently thanked Telokopolis, and Ilyusha too.
“It was a Necromancer,” Cantrelle rasped. Her voice had gone cold and sharp. “Why can’t you admit it, Yola?”
A pause, then Yolanda said, “Perhaps Cantrelle has a point. Nevertheless, we must ensure our short-term survival. We must evade this pursuit until the storm passes, and then we will be given a free hand—”
“Free hand?! Given!?” Cantrelle exploded. “Given by whom? By whom, Yola? You cheating fucking whore, you can’t help yourself, can you—”
“Hey, hey, Canny!”
“Shit, what the fuck—”
“Boss, boss, back up, boss—”
A short scuffle ensued, with insults and fists and metal clattering against metal. Ooni braced herself for the sound of gunfire. Perhaps this problem would thin itself out; the Sisterhood had fought itself enough times before, in quick little blood-letting sessions of cannibalistic violence.
But the fight broke off after only a few moments, with no gunfire or screaming. Somebody was hissing with pain, but that was all.
“Alright, alright!” Cantrelle was shouting, which made her throat sound like shattered gravel. “We focus on survival. Then once we’re out of here, we’re going to have … a talk.”
“A talk, yes,” Yolanda echoed. “I think that would be healthy.”
Ooni was baffled. This conversation was unlike anything she had ever heard in the Sisterhood before. Yolanda’s position meant nothing. Cantrelle should be lying dead on the floor. That word — ‘whore’ — it made no sense. Instead they were arguing out loud, with no concern for the dignity of their remaining leadership. They weren’t bothering with private comms — though Ooni would wager a mouthful of meat that unheard personal conversations were crackling back and forth. They hadn’t even swept the room.
After they had sent the suicide bomber to Pheiri, Ooni had imagined the remnants of the Death’s Heads must be working in much the same way they always had. A forced suicide bombing seemed their style, something Yolanda would have dreamed up. She had expected the Sisterhood to be reduced, disarmed, and fleeing, of course. But not broken, not like this.
Savage pleasure fought with strange nostalgia in Ooni’s breast. Perhaps this was the truth beneath the Sisterhood all along. If there were only two Sisters left in the world, would one kill the other, and then turn her gun on herself? Perhaps this was always the eventual fate of the Death’s Heads.
The world — even a world of ashes and death — would be better off with them gone for good, even if this was just one tiny branch of a horrible weed that kept regrowing.
This was the opening. If Ooni let it slip away, she might never get another chance, never be within range of Yola again. As soon as they moved away from that corner, one of her former Sisters might spot the gauntlet and helmet that Ooni had left in the middle of the central passageway, between the blocks of black glass. Then they would be alert, the element of surprise worth so much less.
Ooni needed a plan. What would Elpida do?
Elpida would not be shaking inside her body armour, nor would her heart be beating so loudly that she feared her foes might hear it, nor would she be wiping away thick rat-tails of hair stuck to her face with cold sweat. Elpida would focus on what really mattered, without hesitation. She would save her comrades. She would pull them out. She would have the right answer, the right moves, as if she’d been born to provide them.
Ooni wasn’t Elpida. There was no way out of this chamber, no exits, no way to get the door open. Two against twelve, with three of those twelve in powered armour? Impossible odds, even if Ilyusha had been fighting fit and on her feet. Ooni chewed her bottom lip; the Death’s Heads were sounding off about supplies, telling each other what they had left, but it didn’t matter how low they were on bullets, Ooni wasn’t enough all by herself. Ilyusha’s shotgun had more stopping power, that was true, but even if Ooni could execute a perfect ambush, she would only be able to take down one, perhaps two Sisters at most, before her own death. She needed something that would deal with them all at once.
Grenades?
The grenades!
Ooni fumbled with the side-pouch of her armour carapace, trying to open it silently; she had to reach around with her left hand, now that her right was encased in a thin layer of Ilyusha’s blood-pink bio-resin. She stuck her left hand inside the pouch. Yes, there they were, three dense, smooth, heavy little spheres, taken from Pheiri’s stores when she and the others had originally set out on this mission. Kuro had taken them from Ooni earlier, along with her submachine gun and sidearm, but Ooni had grabbed them off the table when she and Ilyusha had escaped that ferromagnetic prison.
Three grenades. Anti-personnel fragmentation, not much use against powered armour. But these would even the odds. And in the confusion after they went off, perhaps Ooni or Ilyusha could mop up whatever was left.
Or Ooni could ambush them just right, and shove a grenade down Yolanda’s throat. If only Ooni could guarantee that she’d live long enough to see the blast go off.
She almost laughed, hate and fear swirling together into something new, hot and urgent and angry. Yolanda had survived one bomb-throwing already. How strange, that Ooni should be in position for another. The first had been an over-clocked plasma rifle, more flash and fire than real damage. Ooni wanted to stick around to see the explosion this time, and confirm that Yola was dead.
Ooni shuffled back to the right, close up against Ilyusha. She whispered directly into Ilyusha’s ear.
“Twelve of them. Three in powered armour. Yolanda and Cantrelle.” She swallowed, then said: “I have a plan.”
Ilyusha watched in sullen surprise as Ooni leaned back and extracted one of the grenades from her pouch. “I have three,” she whispered. “I’m going to get close, then roll the grenades at them from either side, pin them between the detonations. It won’t kill them all, but … it’ll fuck them up.”
Ilyusha bared her teeth. “Me too.”
Ooni shook her head. “You can barely walk,” she whispered. “Stay here. If they think it’s just me, then—”
“Fuck no,” Ilyusha growled.
Ooni winced, but the Death’s Heads didn’t break off their chatter; the distant static of the hurricane beyond the tomb was enough to drown out Ilyusha’s frustration.
Ooni shook her head again. “I’m not planning on dying. I promise. You can’t walk and you can’t get close without making too much noise. I’ll use two grenades. Take out as many as I can. Then we can ambush the survivors. But … stay here. Please. I … I saved you once, you have to live.”
Ilyusha pulled her lips back in a silent snarl, but she nodded. She stuck out a hand. “Gimme one. I’ll follow up. Make ‘em think you’re somewhere else.” She patted her shotgun. “Then with this.”
“Sure. Yes. Good plan.”
Ooni gave Ilyusha one of the three grenades. Ilyusha closed her bionic fingers around the explosive egg, then grinned, showing all her teeth. They briefly discussed which side of the room Ooni would be on, and when she would throw the grenades, so that Ilyusha wouldn’t accidentally catch her with the third. Then Ooni handed Ilyusha the spare comms headset.
“Private channel, short range,” Ooni whispered. “Just in case. Keep it silent for now.”
Ilyusha dragged the comms headset on, then flashed a thumbs up.
Ooni made sure her submachine gun was strapped tight to her left side, so it wouldn’t click or rattle as she moved. She transferred the two grenades from her right pouch to her left; her right hand was totally useless now, dead weight inside the sheen of resin. The pain still throbbed deep inside her flesh, and from the stiffening bruises in her right shoulder, but it no longer burned, no longer made her weep. She was clear-headed enough for this.
She was about to turn away and creep out of cover when Ilyusha grabbed her by the chin. Red-black bionic fingers closed around her cheeks and drew her around, to face Ilyusha’s flat grey eyes.
It wasn’t Ilyusha. It was Noyabrina again. She wasn’t terrified now — she was murderous, cold and focused and full of hate.
“Don’t die,” Noyabrina hissed.
“I’m not—”
“Liar. You’re a reptile monster elevated by chance. But you’re worth a hundred of them. Don’t die. That’s an order. Or a command. Or whatever the fuck is it you need. You’re not fucking allowed. You belong to the commander.”
“To— to Telokopolis.”
“Whatever.”
Noyabrina let go of Ooni’s chin, and she was Ilyusha again. Illy fingered her shotgun and cracked a grin. “Let’s go kill some snakes,” she whispered.
Ooni swallowed, nodded with all her heart, and crept from her hiding place.
Out in the open pathway between the rows of black glass, Ooni’s skin rose in a wave of goosebumps, her heart climbed into her mouth, and she broke out in freezing sweat. She tried her best not to shiver and shake. She could no longer see the shifting shadows of her former Sisters in the reflections, but she spotted the side of a leg and the curve of an elbow at the end of the path. One step back and whoever that was would spot her, right out in the open.
She scurried across the path in a crouch-walk and slipped into the forest of black glass monoliths on the opposite side, trying to ignore the pain in her right hand and the deep throb in her shoulder, pulsing in time with her racing heartbeat. She held her breath — easy for a revenant — and listened.
“—we are being led to the slaughter by the machinations of some bullshit we don’t even understand,” Cantrelle was saying. “We should stay here until the storm is gone.”
Somebody sighed loudly. “Wish Kuro hadn’t run off. She’d deal with this.”
That was Elodie? Elodie had survived the Sisterhood’s near-destruction? Ooni shivered with involuntary disgust. Elodie was one of the worst, always the first to beeline toward anyone who had lost their position or lost a fight, anybody vulnerable. Ooni had watched Elodie murder and eat at least three Sisters, people with no friends or connections or personal strength left to draw on.
“Don’t say that name again,” Cantrelle spat. “She’s a traitor. Barely better than an apostate now. If she comes back—”
Yolanda interrupted. “If Kuro returns, we will welcome her with open arms. She is our sister.”
Silence for a heartbeat. Then Cantrelle started shouting, mostly at Yola, mostly about Kuro, peppering her tirade with sexual insults, accusing Yolanda of things Ooni had never considered. Another scuffle broke out, followed by a grunt, and a scream of pain. With any luck, one of them would start shooting, and Ooni could roll the grenades in there, right between their feet.
She broke from cover again, then ducked into the next row of black glass, then again, and again, and again, working her forward to the planned position. She scurried quickly past the pathway junction in the middle of the room, glancing to her right; she made eye contact with the interface zombie, upright and silent in the resurrection coffin, staring forward—
The eyes flickered to follow her.
Ooni almost stumbled in surprise. She slipped into the next row of black glass blocks, heart hammering, pulse a blinding throb inside her head. Had she made a sound? Had she—
“Hey! Hey, hey!” a voice rose above the scuffle — close now. Ooni stiffened with fear, but the voice didn’t seem alert, just irritated. Elodie again. “Hey, everyone shut up! Shut up!”
“What? What!?” DeeGee’s voice, crackling from inside her armour.
“Elodie, speak,” Yolanda said. She sounded out of breath. Ooni had never heard Yolanda out of breath; such a thing didn’t seem possible.
Ooni drew the first grenade from her pouch. Had one of them spotted her at the last second? Should she throw now? Was it now or never or—
“There’s … something on the ground … ” Elodie said. “One sec.”
Ooni closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip. The helmet and the glove, the ones she’d left in the middle of the junction. She’d known this would happen.
Before Ooni could react, a dark figure jogged right past her hiding place, a shaggy outline of combat gear and bionics. The footsteps halted right in the middle of the room, in the junction.
Silence.
Ooni’s blood went cold. The Sisterhood had gone to comms. Ooni had seconds before the group split up and spread out. She eased to her left and spotted Elodie’s back right in the middle of the junction — a lean cord of muscle wrapped in overlapping armour plates. She was lifting Ooni’s ruined helmet in one hand.
Ooni jabbed at her own comms headset. She needed to know what they were saying — then she winced, because the Sisterhood’s comms net was encrypted. Stupid, stupid!
Her opening was slipping away. She needed shock and surprise, and every pair of eyes elsewhere, for just long enough to roll those grenades either side of the pack.
She needed to confuse them. What would Elpida do!? What would—
No. What would Ooni do?
Ooni screwed her eyes shut, pressed her back against the black glass, and used her teeth to pull the pin on the first grenade. She held it tight in her left fist, spat out the metal pin, and filled her lungs. She summoned the oldest and deepest lie she knew, one her former Sisters could not resist.
“Death to all degenerates!” she howled.
Then she leaned to her right and hurled the first grenade down the centre of the walkway.
She was up and scrambling to her left before the explosive had rolled to a stop, yanking the other grenade from her pouch. A half-second of confused shouts echoed from the end of the chamber — “Who’s that?! Report, who was that—” “—another ghost, it’s another one of them—” “—Kuro, that’s Kuro, she’s hiding—” “—corpse-rapist filth again, it’s one of them, it’s one of—”
Ooni hit the floor with a crash, rolling out from the other end of the row of black glass monoliths. She hit her shoulder on the way down; the pain was like a spiked steel ball tearing through her bones and chest, grinding a wall of glass into her lungs.
She turned the scream of pain into another false battle-cry. “Long live the Sisterhood of the Skull!”
Ooni ripped the pin from the second grenade and rolled it down the open passageway.
Somewhere behind her, Ilyusha opened up with her shotgun — boom!-boom!-boom! — blasting through armour and flesh and whooping at the top of her lungs.
Somebody came around the corner ahead as the grenade bounced and rolled, somebody in powered armour. Yazhu, plasma rifle swinging upward in her gauntlets, the optic trench in her helmet locking onto Ooni with a crackle of red light. The grenade went straight between her armoured feet, bounced off the wall, and came to rest against Yazhu’s heel.
Ooni stared into the barrel of the plasma rifle, at the pinprick of purple light. She couldn’t get up, the pain was so bad she could only slump against the black glass. Yazhu’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Ooni felt an expression rip across her face, one hadn’t made in years. A grin, all teeth.
“Fuck you, death cultist,” she said. “And don’t come back.”
“Grenade!” somebody shouted.
The world detonated.